Chapter Three
Dorset, England 1856
The dark night was her enemy. Jane stumbled through the brambles and thicket, the bare soles of her feet bleeding onto the rough earth beneath.
Faster, she had to move faster. She had to escape.
Heedless of the branches tearing at her exposed flesh, she pushed through the greedy arms of the gnarled oaks.
She heard his voice calling out, and her heart stopped.
Twisting her head from side to side, she searched past the gloom of the forest that surrounded her. Nothing. Not even the wind or the moon’s light penetrated the evil lurking in the cold night air.
She shivered. He was out there somewhere, but all she could hear was her own frenzied breathing, magnified by the smothering silence.
Crouching down beside a tree, she dashed away some stray tears. How could this be happening to her? Why was he doing this?
His hideous voice once again echoed all around her, somehow sounding closer and more malevolent.
“You did not think I would let you get away, did you?”
Jane screamed, scrambling on all fours out onto the forest path. From the corner of her eye, she saw some gleaming black boots and knew then that all was lost; he’d caught her.
One of those boots swung toward her. She tried to stand but was too slow. The hard leather tip connected with her temple, and her head exploded in pain, her body crumpling onto the forest floor.
“There, there now,” he crooned, kneeling beside her and gently brushing her hair off her face. “Such a silly girl, trying to run away from me. You didn’t really think you would be able to escape, did you?”
“Please,” she begged, struggling against him to sit up. “Please don’t hurt me again. Just let me go.”
“It is too late for that.”
“I promise I won’t tell anyone who you are,” she pleaded.
“But you have already tried to tell someone.” His voice dropped an octave as his hand slowly began stroking her neck.
Her breath hitched in her throat. “I…I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do not lie to me!” he growled, his smooth veneer slipping for an instant as his hand clenched tightly about her neck. “Tell me of the letter?” he asked, the pressure slowly receding from his grip.
Jane sucked in a deep breath. “You know I sent a letter?”
His hands gently caressed the place on her neck he had just been squeezing. “Of course. A stupid thing to have done, was it not? But who would have thought a silly orphan maid would know how to write?”
“But, please, I didn’t tell Lady Sophie who you really are—”
“Lady Sophie? Sophie Wolcott?”
“But…but I thought you knew I’d sent her a letter?”
“The letter I knew of, but not to whom you had sent it. Damn,” he cursed, and his hands once again tightened around her neck. “Why would you send it to her of all people? Explain!”
The pressure slowly increased. Jane struggled to speak. “I am a Grey Street Orphan.”
“Ah, the lovely lady’s pet charity.” The man eased his grip slightly.
“Lady Sophie helped me learn to read and write, and she got me my position with the Crowley’s.” She gulped in a deep breath of air, her ribs straining painfully against her corset. “She’s one of only a few people who’s ever cared a fig for me.”
The thought brought a vivid picture to Jane’s mind, of the last time she had seen Lady Sophie a few years ago. Jane had been finishing reading to the other children at Grey Street Orphanage when Lady Sophie had burst into the classroom, waving a letter high into the air, an excited grin spread wide across her face.
Jane could still remember how elated she had felt when she had read the letter, in which the Countess of Abelard actually was offering Jane a job as a laundry maid. Lady Sophie, too, had been ecstatic.
Suddenly, Jane was jolted back to the present as the man’s gloved finger traced the hollow of her neck.
“A shame you repay her by bringing me to her doorstep,” he said.
A sense of horror, unlike Jane had ever known, whispered down her spine. She couldn’t allow such a monster anywhere near Sophie. The very thought filled her with unbridled panic. “But I didn’t tell her nothing about what I overheard ‘bout you,” she tried to convince him. “I swear by all that’s holy, I didn’t tell her! I just wanted to apologize for running out on the Crowleys after all she’d done for me. Please don’t hurt her.”
“How dare you put me in such a position?” The man appeared genuinely affronted. “I am not a monster. I have no wish to hurt such a lovely lady, but you have made it practically impossible for me to take any other course. Make no mistake, it is not my actions that will condemn the lady; that rests squarely upon your shoulders. Stupid girl,” he tittered.
His fingers clenched harder and harder against her throat until Jane thought her lungs would burst. She clawed at his gloved hands, her body bucking as she struggled to get free, but his hold was relentless. Her strength waned, her arms falling limply to her sides.
As black spots began to dance across the edge of her vision, she looked into his eyes and saw her death mirrored in them.
“Poor Jane. In the wrong place at the wrong time, and then, contrary to what you say, you send a letter about me,” the man’s harsh voice reprimanded. “That was a mistake, wasn’t it?”
She stared into the icy depths of his eyes. They were the last thing she saw before her own world went black.