The Devil Earl. Deborah Simmons

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       Chapter One

       Autumn—1818

       Cornwall, England

      The wind howled. The shutters rattled.

      Millicent swooned.

      The specter rose up, a chilling vision, to loom over her

      prostrate form…

      “Drat!” Prudence muttered. Pushing her slipping spectacles back into place, she frowned at the sheet of foolscap before her. Her heroine was swooning far too frequently, and the specter very much resembled the apparition in her last book, The Mysterious Alphorise. Her second effort was simply not going well at all.

      What she needed was…inspiration. With a sigh of frustration, Prudence gazed out the window at what had always provided her with the necessary stimulus: Wolfinger Abbey.

      Of course, Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels were what had given her the courage to take up writing herself, but it was the abbey that stirred her creative spirit. It stood high up on the edge of the sea cliff, enshrouded in mist, its dark gray stone stark against the bleak sky, its towers home to the earls of Ravenscar for hundreds of years.

      What secrets did it hold? Prudence had always pondered them, and even as a child she had woven tales of death and destruction, passion and murder, for the area’s most famous structure. Rumors spoke of a vast network of tunnels that lay beneath it, used by wreckers and smugglers not so long ago, but, to her great disappointment, Prudence had never found a single shaft.

      When she was a young girl, she and the village children had dared each other to pass the gloomy gates or creep into the cemetery where the monks who had once walked its halls were buried. But the others had always fled, shrieking in terror, when they got close, leaving Prudence to be turned away by the aged caretaker.

      Ever since, Prudence had been frustrated in her efforts to gain entry, because the abbey stood empty, for the most part, the earldom having passed to a distant relation who was more interested in the dissipations of London than in a lonely seaside residence. Life went on, bypassing Wolfinger, but it remained, a Gothic sentinel, ancient and aweinspiring. Like a standing stone, it kept its barrow of mysteries closely guarded—and waited for new blood.

      A few locals claimed it was haunted by the ghosts of the sailors who had died on the rocks below, by fair means or foul; others said it was cursed by the bad blood of the Ravenscars who had dwelt there. To the fainthearted, it was macabre; to the more prosaic, an eyesore.

      To Prudence, it was perfect.

      She loved Wolfinger Abbey with a fierce devotion that no one else, certainly none whom she knew, could possibly comprehend. To her, the eerie edifice was the epitome of romance, adventure, excitement—all the things that were lacking in her own placid existence.

      “Pru!” The shout startled her out of her contemplation, and, realizing she was nibbling on the end of her pen, Prudence promptly spit it out and turned to greet her sister.

      Phoebe rushed into the morning room, pink-cheeked and charmingly breathless. Putting a dainty hand to her bosom, she stopped and stared at Prudence, her bright blue eyes wide and slightly glazed. Well accustomed to Phoebe’s theatrical tendencies, Prudence saw no cause for alarm, but simply waited for her sister to explain this sudden excitement. The answer was not long in coming.

      “Oh, Pru! Pru! I have seen him, at last! Oh, be still my heart!” she whispered so dramatically that Prudence spared a moment’s concern that her sister might actually swoon.

      “Him, who?” Prudence asked calmly.

      The question sent Phoebe into new transports. Giving her sister an airy smile, she sank into one of the worn chairs near the hearth and sighed. “Oh, Pru! Simply the most wonderful being in the world…”

      Smiling herself, Prudence knew it would be pointless to seek pertinent details at this juncture, so she simply waited and listened while Phoebe extolled the virtues of some unknown gentleman.

      “He is handsome, so very handsome,” Phoebe said, dreamily lost in reflection. “And so elegant, and such fine manners! Of course, I knew him to be of noble birth at once! His education is obviously well beyond anyone’s in the confines of our small surroundings, and he must be very comfortable in his income.” She shot a guilty look at Prudence. “Not that such a consideration would weigh heavily with me, if it were not for all his other splendid qualities!”

      “Of course,” Prudence agreed, her lips twitching with restrained laughter. “And who exactly is this paragon, or did you not gain his name?”

      “Penhurst. The Honorable James Penhurst, but recently come from London.” She sighed again.

      “Penhurst,” Prudence muttered. “Penhurst?” She looked over at her sister with a start of surprise. “Do not tell me that he is one of the Penhursts, heirs to Wolfinger Abbey?” she asked, her own excitement rising to match her sister’s.

      Phoebe frowned prettily. “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “He is staying there, but I will not have that signify, as he is not at all fond of the place and is more at home in London.”

      “Phoebe! He is at the abbey? You do not mean it!” Prudence leaned forward in her seat, her spectacles slipping down her small nose with the force of her enthusiasm. “This is wonderful. Why, only just now I was thinking again of how I might someday see inside it. If your gentleman is staying there, then surely we can, at last, view the interior!”

      Phoebe shuddered. “Ugh! I have no interest in that monstrosity,” she said. “A nice town house in London—not too big, mind you, but well situated—now that would be the thing! Oh, how I wish I could see the city, just once…”

      Her fancies were lost upon Prudence, who was intent upon her own objective. “James Penhurst,” she muttered. “An honorable, did you say? Then he must be a younger son.” She paused, half-afraid to voice her hopes aloud, then plunged on. “Phoebe, is he…Ravenscar’s brother?”

      “Yes, though I cannot believe it myself. He is nothing at all СКАЧАТЬ