Elizabeth Lane - My Lord Savage

Threading across the land between the cliffs and the rambling old manor house was a narrow road, rutted almost hub-deep by generations of passing carts and wagons. It was on this road that Rowena fixed her worried gaze, stretching beyond the sill to see the place where it disappeared over the eastern horizon.

No horse. No rider. Nothing. And the sun would be setting in less than an hour’s time.

Her father often made the journey to Falmouth. As a scientist, he liked to wander the docks, buying “curiosities,” as he called them, from the sailors—a monkey or parrot, perhaps; maybe an unusual shell or some odd sea creature plucked from the depths and pickled in salt brine. Any and all of these things he would bring home to his laboratory where he would spend days, even weeks, prodding and observing his new prize and taking copious notes in his leather-bound journals.

In more vigorous years these writings had earned Sir Christopher Thornhill a reputation as one of England’s foremost scholars. But he was getting old now, too old to be riding the long, dangerous road alone. Next time, Rowena resolved, she would insist on his taking one of the stable grooms with him or go along herself, despite his protests that the teeming waterfront was no place for a lady.

She lingered at the window, her fingers toying with the heavy ring of keys that hung from a cord at her narrow waist. How would she face life when her father passed on? she found herself wondering. In the seventeen years since her mother’s death she had filled her days with managing the house and servants and assisting him in his laboratory. This crumbling old manor house and her father’s work had consumed her whole life. But he was nearing seventy, and she could sense the looming frailty in the stoop of his shoulders, the slight unsteadiness of his hands. What would she do when the halls no longer echoed with his ponderous footsteps? What would she do when the laboratory lay still and empty?

Marriage? An ironic little smile tugged at a corner of her too wide mouth. Who but an old sot would want her? A spinster two years past thirty, shy and mannishly tall, with a long, narrow face that had always reminded her of a horse? Even with the enticements of house and land, the prospect of finding a worthy husband was hardly worth considering.

She would, of course, carry on her father’s scientific work. But who would take her research seriously? Who would read the scribblings of a mere woman, let alone give them weight and value?

Rowena’s gaze drifted toward the sea where petrels and kittiwakes wheeled above the cliffs. High above them a single soaring albatross rode the wind, its outstretched wings as still as if they had been carved from white marble.

As she watched the bird’s flight, Rowena was seized by a yearning so powerful that her lips parted in silent response. The walls of the ancient house seemed to close around her, shutting her in like the gates of a prison. The heavy folds of her skirts and the rigid constriction of her corset seemed to drag her down like the weight of iron shackles. Even her own rational mind, hardened by a lifetime of common sense, held her back from following the cry of her heart—to shed the chains of house and clothes and reason, to spread her wings and soar with the albatross over the oceans to places she would never see in her sober lifetime; places whose very names resonated with music—Cathay, Zanzibar, Constantinople, America…

Pulling back into herself she dropped her gaze from the sky to the spot where her long, pale fingers rested on the limestone sill. When she glanced up again there was a dark speck moving along the distant road toward the house.

Little by little the speck materialized into a wagon—a ramshackle one-horse dray with two men hunched on the seat and a long, dark form lying across the open bed. Rowena’s hand crept to her throat as she recognized her father’s gelding, Blackamoor, dancing alongside the wagon on a tether. The gelding’s saddle was empty.

Her long legs took the steps two at a time as she raced downstairs to what, in grander days, had been the great hall. Her slippered feet flew across the rush-strewn floor, their swift passage releasing the scent of crushed rosemary behind her.

By the time she reached the front door, Rowena’s heart was hammering with dread. What had possessed her to let her father go off alone this morning? She should have ridden along on the pretext of some errand or devised an excuse to keep him at home. Whatever disaster had befallen him now, the fault was at least partly her own.

The front doors opened straightaway onto the moor. Rowena burst outside to see that the dray was still a considerable distance off. Too agitated to wait, she caught up her skirts and broke into a headlong run that bruised her feet through the thin leather house slippers. The sea wind tore the pins from her hair as she plunged toward the road. Would she find her father hurt? Ill? Even dead?

At the crest of a long hedgerow she paused for a moment to rest. Her ribs heaved beneath the constricting stays of her corset, and her breath came in agonized gasps, but she had halved the distance between herself and the dray. Only now did she have a clear view of the two men on the seat. One of them was the driver, an unkempt hireling she had often seen in town. The other—

Rowena’s knees buckled with relief as she recognized her father’s stoop-shouldered frame and low-crowned woolen hat. He was all right. She had worried herself to a frenzy for nothing.

But why had he taken the trouble to hire a dray? What was the nature of the dark, mysterious shape that lay across the planks behind him, wrapped in what appeared to be a canvas sail? Had Sir Christopher purchased some exotic new specimen? A large fish, perhaps? A dolphin? A dead seal? She thought of the long marble dissecting table in the laboratory and the exhausting days and nights to come as they labored to learn and catalog their discoveries before putrefaction made the work impossible.

“Rowena!” Her father’s sharp-edged voice rang out across the distance. His arm beckoned her to come, but she was already running toward the roadway, her skirts gathering green burrs where they trailed behind her.

By the time she reached the edge of the road she was too winded to speak. She stood warm and panting, her hair streaming in the breeze as the dray, drawn by a spavined cart horse, lumbered toward her.

“Rowena. Good.” Her father nodded in his terse way. “I’ll be needing some help with this specimen. Ride Blackamoor back to the stable. Tell Thomas and Dickon to be in the courtyard when we arrive. Have Ned clear out the barred room in the cellar and spread the floor with clean straw. Quickly.”

“The cellar?” Rowena stared up at him, dumbfounded. “But how can you mean that? The place is little more than a rat warren! No one goes down there, ’tis so dark and damp and moldy! Father, I truly do not understand—”

“Soon enough you will. Hurry, now.” Sir Christopher reached in front of the driver, seized the slack reins and pulled the plodding nag to a halt. Blackamoor, impatient for stall and feed, snorted and tugged at the tether that held him to the side of the dray.

“Steady, there.” Rowena eased closer to the high-strung gelding, caught the bridle and, with her free hand began unloosing the tether. While her fingers worked the knot, her gaze was compellingly drawn to the canvas-swathed bundle that was lashed with thick ropes to the bed of the dray. From what she could see of the thing inside, she could judge nothing except that it was long—the length of a tall man. Her lips parted in astonishment as she saw a slight movement and realized that beneath its heavy wrappings the creature was breathing.

“Father!” She spun around to face him, her heart pounding. “The beast is alive! You must tell me what it is!”