No Conventional Miss. Eleanor Webster

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       Prologue

      Gibson Manor—1805

      The child had been missing for three days.

      Through the nursery windowpanes, Rilla watched the faint flickering of the men’s torches as they searched. Occasionally she heard their hoarse cries.

      It was a wet spring. Heavy raindrops fell rhythmically off the shrubbery. A thick, obscuring mist hung low, tangling in the bare branches and turning the countryside a flat, featureless grey.

      Rilla shivered and rested her head against the cool windowpane. She thought of Sophie. The little girl was new to the neighbourhood, a visitor and only five. Even at nine, Rilla would hate to be outside in this weather. And Rilla was strong and tall. She climbed trees, building perches in their upper branches and swinging from their limbs.

      Oh, why did her head ache? Why did her limbs feel heavy as though weighted with huge sacks of flour?

      Even the glow of twilight hurt and she squeezed her lids tight shut, pressing her palms to her eyes to cut out any vestige of light.

      And then ‘it’ happened.

      For ever after, Rilla said she slept and dreamed. There was, could be, no other explanation.

      Except Rilla did not remember lying down. There was no rest, no comfortable drifting into slumber.

      Instead, it felt as though she remained standing while everything about her changed and mutated: the whitewashed walls, the books, the rocking horse with its worn paint, the brick hearth, her grandmother’s ugly portrait and equally ugly embroidered sampler—gone.

      Cold mist dampened her skin. Goosebumps prickled. Her breath came in harsh gulps. She stared into the fog’s whiteness, trying to make out indistinct forms and shadows.

      Yes, she knew the place. It was the gamekeeper’s cottage, burned down years earlier and now a ruin, its blackened beams softened by ivy.

      Sophie.

      Sophie was here.

      The knowledge came suddenly and completely, without doubt or question.

      Sophie was trapped within the cellar, under the slate floor of the broken kitchen.

      * * *

      Rilla blinked. She was lying on the cold nursery floor, staring upwards at the whitewashed ceiling with its singular crack which looked like a lamb’s hind leg. She sat up. Tentatively she touched the cloth of her dress and twisted her fingers through the unruly tresses of her red hair.

      Dry.

      Her shoes were clean and dry also.

      And yet...

      In the distance, she heard the shouts of the men’s voices.

      She jumped up, suddenly urgent. She must tell them. They did not know yet. They must know. Then they would find Sophie and save her.

      Thank goodness.

      And everything would change.