Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1) Read online

  How did I become so superstitious? I was sensible once, was I not? Now my dreams are incensed with asphodel and my nights imbued by haunting strangeness. The gargoyles stir at dusk and the moors howl and gnaw against the battlements. But my every wakeful thought is for the master who reigns o’er this exquisite darkness.

  Also by Jeanine Croft

  Thorne Bay

  Winterly is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Jeanine Croft

  Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First published in the United States of America in August 2020 by Jeanine Croft.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact the author at [email protected]

  Names: Croft, Jeanine, author.

  Title: Winterly / Jeanine Croft

  Summary: “In 19th century Whitby, Emma Rose finds herself making a deal with a vampyre—her life in exchange for her sister’s safety, a contract that defies all laws of heaven. When she surrenders to the call of her blood, she finds where she belonged all along—in the arms of the devil himself.”

  ISBN 9798670043687 (paperback)

  Cover design by Jeanine Croft

  Photo by Alisa Ustyuzhanina

  Contents

  Prologue

  Also by Jeanine Croft

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For William.

  It is my life’s privilege to be your mother.

  Part One

  The Master of Winterthurse

  “Stars, hide your fires;

  Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

  William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  Chapter One

  Littérature Étrange

  My dear Mary,—I am consigned to London for the season to chaperone Milli. Would you believe, I alighted from the coach in Lad Lane only to plant my boot and petticoats five inches deep in a feculent mass of horse leavings upon taking my inaugural steps. Thus has my London adventure begun. Your loving and muck-stained cousin,

  Emma.

  “The great dragon and his dark angels were cast down to earth from heaven; cast into eternal darkness.” The rector’s hair was ruffled with excitement as he sermonized.

  Emma Rose smothered an errant yawn, her thoughts straying from angels and dragons to lustful monks and magic mirrors. She lowered her gaze, sure that her cheeks were flushed with wicked scarlet. It had occurred to her last Sunday that reading romances into the small hours was likely better avoided on the night before the Sabbath.

  Her second yawn, however, would not be so easily suppressed, and though she tried to disguise it with an inconspicuous hand, her uncle marked the offense with a flattening of his mouth. His brief side glance nudged her like a reproving elbow.

  “From that darkness, the dragon corrupts God’s flock…”

  Emma’s lip twitched as she observed one of God’s flock surreptitiously picking his nose in the second row pew.

  “…Wander not from the light; stray not from the path of righteousness…”

  Emma tried to attend the sermon, but was too distracted. She glanced at her sister. Millicent was perched beside her in the pew, unaffected by the dolorous mood that overshadowed every face, her chin tucked demurely into her neck as though in devotional repose beneath her bonnet. Her lashes were lowered to her cheeks in a semblance of prayer, to all observers a most faithful and devout paragon. Fortunately, it was only Emma who appeared to notice her sister’s quiet snoring, overpowered as it was by the fiery homily.

  The prospect of the sun becoming black and the moon like blood ought to have been the enemy to slumber, but Milli was an uncomplicated creature and when she put her mind to something—or turned it off, for that matter—she was more often successful than not. She was of that blessed race of people that seemed always to land in muck and walk out unsoiled, reeking of roses. Emma was decidedly not one among that lucky race.

  In the course of the service, as the first strident key of the piano was sounding a hymn, Emma felt it incumbent on her to drop Milli’s psalm book, none too gently, in her younger sister’s lap. Accordingly, Milli’s lids flew wide and she shot up directly from her seat to stand beside Emma with a muffled giggle.

  Milli glanced at the page number of Emma’s hymnal before flicking hastily through her own. “What have I missed?” she whispered under her breath.

  “The stars falling to the earth,” Emma replied. But she quickly suppressed the smirk that was nudging at the corner of her mouth, aware that her uncle’s beetled brow had swung towards her yet again.

  He acknowledged with a nod the penitent flush that mottled her cheeks and continued singing. It was devilish unfair of him to have noticed Emma’s misbehavior so readily yet remain oblivious to her sister’s. Milli, God bless her, would only have to flash a smile at the surliest judge and be acquitted of murder despite bloodied hands. But then beauty always would enjoy an unfair advantage over the rest of God’s plainer creatures.

  Her earlier good humor now much subdued, Emma lent her voice to the hymn and absently studied the faces of the parishioners. There was an ominous tension in the room that had little to do with the dour young rector’s apocalyptic sermon. The whole of London, in fact, seemed invested in widow’s weeds. Each expression was imbrued with gloom, every whisper furtive and curt, all save her own and Milli’s. Well, her Aunt Haywood might also have been included in that minority, but the old dear was rarely aware of the hour, never mind the day of the
year, and she was certainly in no danger of being sensible to the grim features of her leery neighbors. Uncle Haywood, however, was manifestly au fait with whatever evils plagued London, yet, time and again, he spared himself the trouble of satisfying his niece’s curiosity. Much to Emma’s vexation, her uncle took to answering her with contrived deafness. Although, she allowed, he was rather deaf at the best of times, poor fellow.

  At length, the rector’s voice grew hoarse and the service drew to a close. It was with dreary shuffling that the murmurous flock began to withdraw from their perches in a funereal procession of narrowed looks.

  “Ghastly business!” said a man nearby. He was speaking in hushed tones to the gentleman beside him. “My poor Fanny keeps to her bed now; she won’t even look out the window, lest she attract some fiend’s notice.”

  “More than a few rum-looking fellows about, I can tell you,” said his neighbor.

  “And what think you of these pestiferous fogs we’ve been having of late?”

  “Quite chronic, indeed.”

  “I blame the Whigs, sir.”

  “Quite so!”

  Emma gritted her teeth against an absurd impulse to interject and demand these perfect strangers expound what her uncle determinedly withheld. With a rueful sigh, she trailed after her guardians, resigned instead to filling her empty stomach with warm vittles in lieu of fulfilling her curiosity.

  At the door, she returned the rector’s adieu, noticing the way his stern expression instantly smoothed beneath the power of Milli’s angelic smile. And he was not the only ridiculous young hopeful to find himself besotted by her sister. Rolling her eyes, Emma pushed past the two young gentlemen that were also vying for Milli’s attention. In due course, the girls followed their elders from the churchyard down to the cobbled lane—the flirtations having finally concluded—and thence onto the thoroughfare that would take them back to their uncle’s townhome.

  The clouds were so heavy with gloom that their black underbellies seemed to drag along the rooftops. It was really too bad, Emma thought, glaring down at her clacking boots, that Milli’s coquettish smile could not do for the London sky what it had done for her admirers who had left the church with brightened gazes.

  She pulled off her glove to better scratch the itch on her nose and ducked her head, lest anyone think she was picking it instead. Emma’s thoughts so overmastered all other faculties—such as the simple business of avoiding fellow pedestrians—that it was with a startled gasp that her bonnet collided with another’s.

  The stranger threw up her hand the very same moment that Emma did, therewith dropping her reticule into a dirty puddle and promptly rueing its loss with some foreign and obscure utterance. The contact of those long white fingers, raised in defense, against Emma’s own naked palm shot a strange and unpleasant current along Emma’s skin. She hastily slipped her glove back on, muttering apologies.

  “Faith, Emma!” said her sister with a snort, “what good are your spectacles if you will not look through them and watch where you are going.” Milli punctuated this jest with a good natured laugh.

  Disregarding the playful reproof, Emma immediately begged the lady’s pardon yet again and bent to retrieve the soiled reticule from the mud. It was quite ruined. “Please, you must allow me replace it for you.”

  “No need,” the stranger replied, taking the item from Emma, her pale eyes strangely intent as they pored over Emma’s face. “This one is old and not worth the worry.”

  Emma considered the costly silk reticule with a dubious nod—the mud failing to mask its obvious quality—then lifted her eyes back to the striking woman.

  Though the stranger’s bonnet swallowed much of her face and platinum curls, it did nothing to hide the loveliness of her porcelain features, atop which not a single freckle was bestrewn. The shape of her eyes were fiercely exotic and the press of that gaze was bold and not a little unsettling. There was something of unnerving delight behind her smile that gave Emma pause. The lady appeared distracted as introductions were dispensed with. She politely gave her name—which, queerly, Emma forgot almost instantly—and then apologized for her part in the collision. Emma admitted the fault was entirely her own.

  The elder Miss Rose was hardly used to attracting notice, especially when in her younger sister’s fresh company, for Milli favored their beautiful mother in looks and figure. Emma’s much plainer features were forged in the mold of her father’s kin. But that did not signify, for, although Emma’s petals came up short beside Milli’s, she flattered herself she possessed an elastic mind, quick tongue, and a diverting love of the absurd which, on better acquaintance (or so she’d been told) lent her some prettiness. Yet this lady could know none of that, so the expression of intrigue she wore was decidedly unwarranted.

  Milli, however, appeared wholly unconcerned by the lady’s eccentricity. Instead, she turned to call her uncle back. “Hulloa! Hulloa! Uncle!” Milli waved in vain.

  “Poor dear,” said Emma, “he would not hear a cannon fire if he was sitting on the iron muzzle.” There was naught the matter with their aunt’s hearing, of course, but the fairies had seemingly run off with Aunt Sophie’s thoughts again.

  Milli assured herself once more that the stranger was unhurt, if a little ill-used (the woman politely declared she was not), and then excused herself. She then promised to return with the wayward Haywoods directly.

  “Oh dear, she really need not call your uncle back,” said the woman, staring after Milli. She possessed a peculiar accent, namely in that she seemed not to have one. Emma could not place her at all. “Well, you mustn’t think me rude, but I am abominably late for an engagement and cannot delay a moment more. Goodbye, Miss Rose.”

  Emma, chagrined at herself for having misplaced the woman’s name, bid her a stuttered adieu and stared after her as she bustled down the lane and disappeared into the crowd. It was then that Emma noticed an ivory card lying on the ground where the lady had stood moments before, her dress having mantled it in the confusion of their accidental meeting. It was surprisingly untainted by London filth. A very pretty card—or, on closer inspection, an invitation of sorts—with a black lace border and elegant black script. Littérature Étrange it read. Neatly printed below that was a date, a time, and an address in Cavendish Square. She wondered if Étrangère had regretfully been misprinted as Étrange. A Foreign Books exhibition seemed far more likely than one that featured Strange Books, so Emma determined that it must indeed be a misprint.

  Emma hoped the stranger whose name she’d stupidly forgotten (confound her poxy memory!) had memorized the address and that her entrée was not wholly dependent on possession of the physical invitation she’d mislaid.

  Milli had by this time caught up with their aunt and uncle and was pointing and gesturing animatedly. Without further ado, Emma left the scene of the incident, sure that the lady was not returning for her card, and joined her family.

  Perhaps she ought to present herself in Cavendish Square at the specified date and time. Emma could then return the invitation to its eccentric owner and, having played the heroine, perhaps venture to hope for an invitation for herself. Books were something of an obsession with Emma, and if the exhibit truly contained strange books, then Emma was that much more determined to go. She was after all, in her family’s opinion, a strange sort of bird.

  “Do stop dawdling, Emma.” Milli knit their elbows together and gave her sister a little tug. “Where did your victim disappear to?” Milli searched the crowd. “Uncle thinks we’re having him on, for she’s quite disappeared without his having seen her.”

  “Do you recall her name?” Emma tucked the invitation into her bible for safekeeping as their uncle gestured impatiently for them to hurry along.

  “Of course I remember. It’s…” Milli’s mouth twisted in consternation a moment. “Oh, pooh! How vexing, it’s quite escaped my tongue.” But she didn’t let that trouble her too long. “Well, never mind her silly name—and I do recall it was a very silly name. I d
aresay, I was rather too distracted by her ghastly dress. How positively outdated she looked.”

  “She was rather odd,” Emma agreed, glancing back.

  The woman with the silly name had been unfashionably dressed in what appeared to have been an absurd amount of fusty dark velvet, yellowed lace ruffles, and a black fichu. Her hands had been invested in ivory netting that might once have been her grandmother’s fingerless gloves.

  “Odd you say? I’d as soon have called her a mystic!” Milli gave a sudden squeal of excitement. “Oh! It’s a famous good thing her crystal ball wasn’t in her reticule or she’d have cursed you in her gypsy tongue for shattering it!”

  “You, Milli, are the silliest creature that ever possessed a tongue.”

  “If you should happen to run into her again,” said Milli with a sportive grin, “do ask her to divine my future in her crystal. Do you think she would for a shilling?”