Mist of Midnight

Thank you for downloading this Howard Books eBook.

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Howard Books and Simon & Schuster.

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

Praise for

Mist of Midnight

“Among the many things I love about reading a Sandra Byrd novel is knowing that her words will transport me to another place and time, that she will win me over with intriguing and complex characters, and that I'll savor every word.
Mist of Midnight
is no exception. I loved this book! Sandra Byrd could belong to the writing group of the Brontë sisters if they'd had one.
Wuthering Heights
and
Jane Eyre
along with crumbling mansions, mysterious distant cousins, and one woman's journey to prove who she really is are just few layers that ripple through the mists. Bravo, Sandra! Another winner.”

—Jane Kirkpatrick, award-winning author of
A Light in the Wilderness

“From the first word to the last,
Mist of Midnight
is a completely absorbing romantic, and mysterious, novel. Ms. Byrd's writing is splendid, and her characters are so complex and endearing that they leap off the pages. I couldn't put it down. An absolutely irresistible read!”

—Anne Girard, author of
Madame Picasso

“Sandra Byrd's trademark attention to historical accuracy combines with an eerily building intrigue to envelop readers in a sense of dark foreboding that hinges precariously between hope and desperation.
Mist of Midnight
is a subtly haunting, beautifully atmospheric, and decadently romantic Victorian tale that will find a comfortable home among the best Gothic romances of days gone by.”

—Serena Chase, author of
The Ryn
and contributor to
USA Today
's Happy Ever After blog

“Once again, Sandra Byrd delivers a richly layered story that will leave you eagerly awaiting the next book in this brand-new series.
Mist of Midnight
has it all: intriguing and memorable characters—including a central female protagonist who is both complex and inspiring—a plot chock-full of mystery and suspense, and a Victorian gothic setting, impeccably researched and artfully and evocatively relayed. Prepare to be transported!”

—Karen Halvorsen Schreck, author of
Sing for Me

“
Mist of Midnight
is a beautiful, haunting tale. Sandra Byrd masterfully weaves together both romance and suspense among a cast of mysterious characters. I was immediately swept into the wonder of this story, and I loved unraveling all the secrets and discovering exactly what happened at the old Headbourne House.”

—Melanie Dobson, author of
Chateau of Secrets
and
The Courier of Caswell Hall

“Not since
Jane Eyre
have I read a Gothic romance that has captured my heart so completely. From the exotic India to an English estate shrouded in mystery, Byrd's eye for detail shines through on every page. Romance lovers are sure to devour the tale of Rebecca Ravenshaw and her search for the truth behind the mysteries of Headbourne House and the handsome young captain who lives on the estate.”

—Renee Chaw, reviewer at Black 'n Gold Girl's Book Spot

. . . man he made and for him built

Magnificent this world, and earth his seat,

Him lord pronounced; and, Oh indignity!

Subjected to his service angel-wings,

And flaming ministers to watch and tend

Their earthly charge: Of these the vigilance

I dread; and, to elude, thus wrapped in mist

Of midnight vapor glide obscure, and pry

In every bush and brake, where hap may find

The serpent sleeping; in whose mazy folds

To hide me, and the dark intent I bring.

—
PARADISE LOST
, JOHN MILTON

LATE FEBRUARY 1858

BOMBAY

They were gone now, every last one of them. Gone, but not completely gone.

I still saw them at midnight.

I surrendered too, by leaving. The ship pulled from the shore whilst I beheld the distancing plumage of saris—azure and emerald and flame—the soft brown arms, necks, and noses circled with gold, like exquisite birds of paradise. A threadbare charity dress the Lord Mayor of London had provided, to me and to all survivors who had nothing of their own to claim, pasted to my skin with a familiar fine grit of dust and sweat.

The dress was black, for mourning.

I clutched the rail, my ears tuned to the rough symphony of a dozen dock languages: half Eastern, half Western, smattered into a whole. My eyes were hollow, my legs frail as a Hindu holy calf's after nearly eight months at the Residency with other survivors.

“We'll soon be home, lassie.” Mrs. MacAlister lifted one hand from the ship and put it on mine as she faced into the salt-spiked breeze.
We'd met but a month earlier and I knew little about her, but she'd agreed to be my chaperone for the eight-week journey.

I was already home. Home was India. Home was with my parents, my brother, my friends, although now I was deprived of them all.

“England for ye, of course, and Scotland for me; civilization,” she continued. “Then ye shall have peace and happiness. Security ever after.” She nodded and smiled, but her eyes were flat—weary and restless like the driftwood the ship's wake pushed aside.

Peace and happiness. Security. All that was mine until the Indian mutineers rode in; they said they wanted to reclaim their land, we said we were innocent: sent to serve, not steal. There was truth and misunderstanding on both sides. They'd killed my parents, they'd smothered my hopes. Instead of robbing me of my dreams they'd warped them until I could barely sleep three steady hours without hearing the gurgling of blood in the throat of a man shot off his horse, or recalling pitched insanity in the eyes of a woman who'd witnessed her husband struck down.

Had my mother looked like that before they cast her body, with Father's, into a dry well?

I had discovered, in those starless nights, that I had lost not only my family but the affections of the Lord as well
. . .
he giveth his beloved sleep
, the psalmist promises.

I slept not.

Were the dreams memories? Fever fancies? Whichever, they could not be banished no matter what I tried. Perhaps I would be afflicted with them forever. Perhaps they would rob me of my rationality. Perhaps they already had.

Mummy. I miss you.

I looked a thousand miles southward, where my brother Peter rested beneath the fertile earth of Tamil Nadu, his body having been yielded up as a living sacrifice some years earlier via cholera. I closed my
wet eyes and summoned an old memory to blot the fresh ones at hand: Mother, clutching four-year-old me in her arms as she sailed unwillingly from England nigh on twenty years earlier, at the command of my father, who'd been driven to serve. Mother had not kept England's horizon in view as long as possible. Instead, she'd refused to look back, fearfully recalling, perhaps, Lot's wife, turned to a pillar of salt for despairing of losing her home against the command of God's angels.

I, however, opened my eyes and kept my beloved land in view till India's hand slipped from mine.

If the only gain to be had in exchange for having my home stolen was security, then I determined to find it, grasp it, keep it. Security would have to satisfy; peace and happiness, one suspected, had fled for good and I would not risk losing the permanence of the former to gain the transience of the latter.

My heart and mind would not survive another deathblow.

CHAPTER ONE

LATE APRIL 1858

D
usk had begun to smother daylight as we walked down the cool street, peering at the numbers above the doorways, one after the other, skirts gathered in hand to keep them from grazing the occasional piles of wet mud and steamy horse muck. It was with some relief that I finally located the right building just before closing time and opened the creaking door. I let Mrs. MacAlister in first.

“May I assist?” An older woman stopped bustling as we entered the Winchester office of Mr. Walter Highmore, Solicitor. She peered at us from beneath thick pelts of white eyebrow.

“I am Miss Rebecca Ravenshaw,” I introduced myself. “Here to see my father's solicitor.”

“Oh!” She drew her breath and steadied herself on the back of a worn upholstered chair. “Why, that can't be. That's not right of you to claim, neither.” Her mouth grew firm, a notable contrast with the loose flesh of her cheeks and chin. “Miss Rebecca Ravenshaw, why, she's late.”

“Late?” I blinked. “I don't understand.”

“Passed on.” She gave me a hard look, the look one offered a ne'er-do-well.
“Deceased.”

Deceased? Ah! I now understood and rushed to reassure her. “Oh, no. You must have had word from the London Missionary Society; there has been a misunderstanding. Alas, my parents were killed in the Mutiny, but I was able to escape. I've been in northern India these many months, waiting for transport out, and I boarded one of the first ships bringing survivors from Bombay. My chaperone and I have just arrived.” I offered a warm smile and expected, fruitlessly, as it transpired, one to be offered in return.

She gripped the chair back firmly enough to leach the blood from her fingertips, pinched by well-bitten cuticles. “I suppose you've read the published details in the paper then, young lady, as much as anything,” she replied. “Available for any quick and clever charlatan. Miss Ravenshaw is gone. There is no misunderstanding, though she died here, of course, not in India. It's cruel of you to suggest different.”

What did she mean? I had just explained the situation to her and yet she pressed more resolutely into her mistake, questioning my character in the process. I pulled myself up to my full height and spoke calmly. “I assure you, I am quite alive, standing here before you. Would you please have Mr. Highmore call upon me at his earliest convenience?”

She wouldn't meet my eye but she looked over my thin, threadbare dress. “Where shall I tell him he may find you?” she sneered. “Will you be staying at the Swan? After all, Captain Whitfield has once again taken up residence on the estate.” She lowered her voice and muttered more to herself than to me, “Though not all hereabouts believe he came by it rightfully.” I in
clined my head but she rushed forward into the next sentence, speaking louder, perhaps to cover her earlier indiscretion.

“Dear young Miss Ravenshaw, buried there at the chapel, at peace, one hopes, though given the cause of death . . .”

“Buried at Headbourne?” If what she was saying was true, there was only one explanation—an imposter had come, claiming to be me, and then had died. How very distressing for all involved. My stomach quickened as I began to realize that the easy, warm welcome I'd hoped would be put forward might not be offered. I tried to grasp the circumstances. “What did the woman die from?”

“That's not for me to say.”

“Well, who shall tell me, then?” My voice rose beyond ladylike but I was tired and frightened. I held my jaw together to keep my teeth from chattering in dread. What had happened to my home? It, and my father's accounts, were the only things left me.

Her lips remained pursed, her eyes veiled. That someone had posed as me, and was now dead, was truly startling, but I had been through much worse in the Uprising and I must not be deterred on this last leg of my journey or all would be lost. “I do not know Captain Whitfield or why he is in my home”—I steadied my voice—“but perhaps I should make his immediate acquaintance.”

“You'll find him at home.” She sniffed and wiped her nose on a dusty sleeve. “Headbourne House.”

Headbourne House was our family home. My father's home. My home! Who was Captain Whitfield? Perhaps a second imposter claimant. The husband of this recently deceased young woman who had been posing as me.

“When he returns, I'll inform Mr. Highmore you called.” She all but shooed us out the door and shut it tightly behind us, snapping down the blind.

Mrs. MacAlister gave me a sidelong look and tightened her bonnet against her brow. “How very strange.” She stepped a foot farther away from me. How little I had left to prove who I was. Nothing, in fact. Anyone who knew me was thousands of miles away by sea in a country currently rent with strife and faulty communications.

I steadied my hands, which I'd just noticed were shaking, by clasping them together. “We shall soon put it right.” I said it, but I wasn't sure I believed it. This situation was not only wholly unexpected, but completely unimaginable. I should think, later, upon how to deal with it, but I was still so very, very tired and needed my wits about me.

The hire carriages, which had swarmed the streets only minutes before, seemed to have been engaged to the last and none were to be found. I finally caught a glimpse of one, much farther down the rain-slicked way, and waved. It rolled, rickety, toward us. One wheel wobbled drunkenly and another had a noticeable chip in the frame along with a missing spoke. The coachman soon brought his team to bear. As the horses came closer I shied back from them but they, unlike most horses, did not shy away from me. Rather they seemed to lean in toward me so I leapt back from their hot breath and peglike teeth.

There were no other carriages in view. The night mists had begun to cause a light sheen on Mrs. MacAlister's face and she shivered. “Headbourne House,” I instructed the driver without further consideration.

“That be quite costly,” he said. He looked at me straight on; his eyes were milky and one wandered so that I was unsure upon which I should fix my gaze. I opened my purse and anxiously put a piece of silver into his hand. He kept it open and I reluctantly added another.

He didn't move, but I clasped my purse shut anyway. Mrs. MacAlister did not proffer a coin of her own, as might be expected, but turned her face from me. The driver nodded for us to get in but did not offer a hand. I hefted Mrs. MacAlister in first, then followed her. She was unusually quiet as the team jerked and clopped away.

“Are you quite well?” I asked. I was weary from the journey, still ill from months of internment, and had little patience to pry forth whatever hesitancy had suddenly overcome her.

“Certainly.” She did not look up, but her forehead cleaved in a deep line of concern. Her voice was abnormally cool and uninvolved.

The coachman cracked his whip toward the team and they sped up. Mrs. MacAlister, who had known me and understood the suffering I had borne, no longer trusted me. Perhaps she, too, thought I was a pretender, learning of the Ravenshaw family's death before making my way to the Residency with the other survivors. It was true, no one there had known me; they'd simply trusted me to be who I said I was.

All the while, someone here in England had also claimed to be Rebecca Ravenshaw. She, too, had simply been believed.

“Ye have a deep knowledge of Scripture, certainly, as one would expect from the daughter of missionaries,” Mrs. MacAlister murmured, reassuring herself, I guessed, before doubt over my identity snatched such guarantees away. “But then any well-brought-up young lady would. I didn't know much about ye when we first met among the survivors, naught but what you told me. Told everyone.”

“I am the well-brought-up daughter of Sir Charles and Constance Ravenshaw, missionaries in South India these many years and, as you know, am returning to England. And you are . . . a Scottish doctor's widow?”

She scowled. “Ye know that I am.”

And I am who I say I am, too
. I looked out of the small carriage window at the street and town; the tall, narrow buildings made of stone and brick belched black smoke, smutting everything in sight. The cobbled streets were so different from the sunny yellow, compacted dirt boulevards I was used to. Melancholy and night dropped heavily one after the other like twin carriage curtains as we traveled out of town and into the deepening green of the countryside, receding into ivy and oak. Soon all colors bent to brown and I grew increasingly fearful. Did he know the way? Was he taking us to the right place? I shook myself to clear the gloom. Silly. Why wouldn't he be?

The air sharpened to cold and a collection of birds warbled weakly in the distance. An unwelcome thought shadowed my mind. If it had been so easy to plant a seed of doubt in the mind of a woman who, surely, must know who I am, how difficult would it be to convince those who had already known the pretender Miss Ravenshaw that I was, actually, who I said I was?

I clenched my hands so the nails would lightly pierce the flesh, keeping me fully present. The one and only thing I had assured myself of, with certainty, was that upon docking in England I would have a safe and permanent harbor. How could this now be at risk? I forced myself to take slow and steady breaths in time with the clopping of the horses to bring calm to my spirit.

“We'll be there soon, miss,” the coachman called back. “Ten minutes.”

I tugged at my cuffs to make certain they were straight. Who was Captain Whitfield? Some crusty old naval man, perhaps, with an eye patch and leathered skin, who had found a way to capitalize on my family's misfortune.

Dark had now entirely fallen. I rearranged my hair and awk
wardly tightened my careworn bonnet, nearly tearing off one fragile string in the process.

How soon would I run out of money? Too soon, no matter how late it came.

“We should have gone to the inn first.” Mrs. MacAlister's lips thinned and primmed. I did not respond because, truthfully, I agreed with her. The carriage bounced along up a lengthy, uneven drive that beckoned in my memory, though I recalled it as being wide and bright, not overgrown and rutted, as it was now. I felt, more than remembered, that this was my home. My homecoming, which should have been marked with joy and relief, was instead conspicuously concerning.

The house loomed in the distance, to the right of the drive, of course, which arced in front of it and then slipped off into a spur leading to the stables. I recalled the carriage house tucked behind and to the side. If it were daylight, I should be able to see the soft downs that thickly ribboned the property like a wrapped gift. As the carriage slowed, I saw the guesthouse farther in the distance.

I believe my grandmother Porter once stayed there.

Well beyond the guesthouse was the chapel and the family graveyard.

Where
she
was now interred.
“Dear young Miss Ravenshaw, buried there at the chapel, at peace, one hopes, though given the cause of death . . .”

We pulled to a halt and the carriage rocked for a few seconds on old springs.

“Will I be waiting for you then, for a return trip?” the driver asked.

I nodded. “Yes, if you please.”

He held his hand out once more and I plunked down another precious coin.

“I'll wait in the carriage,” Mrs. MacAlister said. “Do be quick.” She was perhaps contemplating abandoning me here and returning to the safety of town and inn. Her anxiety and mistrust traveled through the miasma and settled on my shoulders.

“Please don't leave until instructed.”

The coachman nodded and this time, he helped me down. I began to walk slowly, wincing slightly, as my foot had not completely healed from the injury sustained as we'd fled the Mutiny. I passed through two stone lions on my way up the pathway, crumbling and partly obscured by moss. I suddenly recalled Peter and me roaring at them, and then laughing as they looked back, silently. Now, perhaps because of the angle of the moon, I saw only their toothy, menacing smiles.
We're still here, but you are not welcome
.

Rebecca! Take hold of yourself. Stone animals do not talk.

Scaffolding surrounded some parts of the house, but there were long portions completely ignored and shrouded in shadows. Lamps, like eyes finally opening, began to be lit in the front rooms. Whoever was inside certainly must have heard our arrival on this still, damp night. I walked up the many steps, but before I reached the door and could knock, it opened.

There stood an imposing middle-aged gentleman with a short tuft of gray hair.

“Captain Whitfield?” I asked.

“Indeed no,” came the unsmiling response. He stepped aside and there, in the hallway, stood a tall man, perhaps five years older than I, with a close-cropped dark beard, his clothing well tailored, his boots highly polished. I looked up and caught his eye and as I did, he caught mine. He was young. Attractive and well cared for, I admitted, a steady contrast to the state of the property itself. Perhaps it was my fatigue or my shock at finding him to be so unlike my expectations, but I did not look away, nor did he.