Ashley Gardner: A Death in Norfolk

England, 1817

In September, amidst a driving rain that swept across the northern Norfolk coast, my hired coach rolled up the drive to my ancestral home and deposited me at the house's front door.

My valet-in-training, Bartholomew, a lad used to working for the very rich, gazed at the edifice in doubt. "You lived here, sir?"

The house stood silently under lowering skies, the roof over one wing completely collapsed. The windows were dark-those that weren't broken. Bricks and rubble decorated what was left of the lawn, and the drive was pitted and covered with weeds.

"Indeed I did," I said.

My father had closed off rooms rather than spend money on repairs. Instead, he'd wagered away all he had or used it on gifts for his mistresses.

The house had at one time been a fine Palladian affair, with fanlights, columns, and a pleasing symmetry. Now the gray-white stone was chipped and fallen away, the Corinthian columns at the door dark with grime. Bits of brick and fallen slates littered the ground.

"And you intend to invite her ladyship here?" Bartholomew's doubt rose several notches.

My wife-to-be, the Dowager Viscountess Breckenridge, daughter of an earl, had grown up on an elegant estate in Oxfordshire and now dwelled in a modern, costly townhouse in South Audley Street in London. I had spent a month at the Oxfordshire estate this summer, and the comparison between the two houses was dire indeed.

"Her ladyship insists," I said.

"Well, you've got your work cut out, sir, I must say."

"That is why I'm pleased you've come along to help, Bartholomew."

Bartholomew's mouth popped open, his face taking on a look of dismay. "Yes, sir."

Bartholomew, former footman to the great and wealthy Lucius Grenville, held himself high above common laborers. I could not resist teasing him.

"I was not suggesting you try a bit of carpentry," I said. "But you can help me coordinate and supervise the repairs."

That was more to Bartholomew's liking, and he looked relieved.

I had another errand to run while I was here in Norfolk, a letter to deliver which had weighed in my pocket all the way from London. I was reluctant to carry out the errand, though it was a simple one, but doing so would be symbolic.

Deliver the enclosed to one Brigadier Easton at Easton House south of Cley. Completion of delivery deducts twenty guineas from your debt. Denis.

James Denis was a criminal but a very subtle one. Very few deeds were traced back to him, and he had magistrates in his pocket. He also owned MPs outright and had aristocrats dancing his bidding. He and I had played a thrust-and-parry game for more than a year now, he constantly trying to coerce me to work for him, and recently he'd assisted me enough to put me firmly in his debt.

A letter written by Denis would not be innocuous. If Grenville had asked me to deliver a message, I'd think nothing of it, but anything involving James Denis could never be that simple.

The enclosed message hadn't been sealed. Denis had known I'd insist on reading what I delivered, and he'd not tried to hide it. But when I opened the message, I found a note that made no sense to me.

I decided I'd make the delivery in case it proved important to Brigadier Easton, but I would not let Denis or the brigadier draw me into any intrigue. Nor would I become a permanent go-between. I'd deliver the letter, and that would be that.

The front door to my house was locked but I had a key, kept among my possessions for twenty years. I hadn't been back to this house since I'd left it to follow my mentor to the army and India, to fight the Tippu Sultan long before the Peninsular Wars began.

The lock proved to be frozen, the key useless, but a firm shove broke the bolt right out of the wall.

I walked into a dim, dust-coated interior. A carpet lay on the floor but so thick with grime that its original color was indiscernible.

I left footprints in the dust as I moved through the wide entrance hall and looked into rooms on either side of the corridor. I expected memories-good and bad-to come flooding at me, but this ruined house looked so different from what I'd left that it spoke to me not at all.

I vaguely remembered the fireplace in the dining room, where my father had leaned while he regaled my mother and me with his pompous lectures. The fireplace had been painted wood, but now the mantelpiece had fallen, exposing the brick behind it.

Bartholomew coughed and pulled out a handkerchief. I moved on to the next room, the library with windows looking over the back garden. The garden was nonexistent now, a stretch of weeds that ran down to join sapling trees at the bottom of the field.

In here, at least, I did feel the touch of my past. My father had beaten me bent over the desk so often, my face pressed into its wooden surface, that I remembered every swirl of the grain.

He'd beaten me for every sin, real and imagined. He'd been trying to make me obedient, and instead had made me rebellious. As I'd grown older, I'd started deliberately inviting the thrashings, because I'd realized that if Father were beating me, he wouldn't be beating my mother.

Memories were hell. As I stood in this room, I remembered why I'd been so keen to follow Aloysius Brandon and his young wife into the army, why I'd hurried to procure a wife of my own. My mother had died long before, and I'd wanted out of this existence, to get away, to find the world outside these walls, to live.

Well, I'd done that. And now here I was, twenty years older, injured, world-weary, far more cynical, and about to marry again. To a lady who'd have put my father in his place faster than a cat swats a sparrow out of the sky.

"Captain!"

Bartholomew's shout cut through my musings. I hurried out, my walking stick tapping in the dust.

I found Bartholomew at the front door. Coming up what was left of the drive was an elegant carriage with high-stepping horses complete with silver-gray plumes. The coachman had a matching brush in his hat, and the door of the carriage held the crest of the viscounts Breckenridge.

"Bloody hell," I said.

The horses shook their heads at the rain, plumes dancing. Bartholomew hurried forward at the same time a footman jumped from the back of the coach into the mud. The footman unhooked a box from beneath the coach and placed it under the carriage door.

The footman opened the door, and a well-formed ankle came down, foot in a pristine leather shoe. Bartholomew and the footman stretched a canvas between them, holding it high to shield the lady who prepared to descend, and I came forward to hand her down.

Donata Anne Catherine St. John, Dowager Viscountess Breckenridge, was thirty years old and my betrothed. That she'd agreed to marry me still came as a bit of a shock.

Lady Breckenridge ignored me completely, thanked Bartholomew and her footman, and lifted her skirts to walk the few feet into the house. She said nothing as she tilted her head back to take in the entire wreck of it.

"I thought you were to stay with your friend near Blakeney," I said, following her. "With its wonderful view of the sea."

"I am, but I could not resist seeing the house of your birth." Lady Breckenridge turned in a circle in the hall, staring up the wide staircase. "A man's home can tell much about him."

"That is what I fear," I said dryly.

"Nonsense. It is falling apart, obviously, but there are good bones here. Well designed. Late seventeenth century, with later additions."

As I stood, rather uncomfortably, on the bones of my ancestral home, Donata turned her dark blue gaze on me. "Now, Gabriel, I know it's bad of me to pounce on you without warning, but I did so want to see the place. Do show me everything."