Chapter One
S
June 1881
The doors to the orangery stood open and a slight
chill whis- pered across her skin. She had asked her mother not to close them yet.
The garden’s last scent was strong, and she wanted today to be perfect. It was perfect. Benjamin held her hand in his
limp grasp. This was their engagement party – something she could still not quite
believe, nor, she suspected, could their guests. She saw the question in their eyes:
why was Benjamin Raycraft, son of Sir Jasper, marrying such a nobody? He was surely
one of the most eligible bachelors in London, not for his form or ability maybe,
poor Benjamin, but blood is blood after all. She and her mother had endured their
interrogations: are you perhaps related to
the Chichester Stanburys? And even, wasn’t it a Phoebe Stanbury who accidentally
hit Prince Alfred with an oar at Henley last year? No, then smile, then no
again. Phoebe wondered what hushed conversations had brought them all to her mother’s
house on the wrong side of the river. Sir Jasper’s pedigree? Or prurient interest
in the unknown bride? No matter, her mother
had said, they are here.
As the music danced, Phoebe snatched a glance at
their guests. Even the Society Editor of The
Times, who sat primly towards the back of the room, had smiled in her direction.
Now his mouth moved slightly, as if composing the words that would sketch this enchanting
evening for his readers. She did not know it then, but Phoebe would never read those
words, and he would not write them.
Beyond the open doors, past the cherub fountain
that tinkled in the evening sun and down the slope to the river, the curtain of
willow trees hid a naked man.
He shivered, his sopping clothes dripping from
the branches of the nearest willow. Flat out on the riverbank, he hoped the weakening
sun might warm him. He could feel his wet back begin to liquefy the hard
surface of the mud beneath him, releasing the earthy smell of decay that the early
summer heat had yet to eliminate. It felt appropriate that he should smell like
this, of nature, of life and death. Today, he would give the gift of one by bestowing
the horror of the other. Today he would right the wrong, the terrible aberration
taking place in the house of swirling music and perfume. He would bring the stink
of corrosion and finally they would know what had been under their noses: a secret,
rotting slowly in the ground for so long.
He rolled on to his front and covered his body
with the resurrected muck of the riverbank, pulling it through his pale hair and
smearing his face and neck with the rich juice of the earth. He dipped his hand
into the chill of the river and wiped some of the mud away, revealing the tattoos
that marked his arms and chest. It was important that everyone should see them,
particularly the girl. He reached for the leather satchel that hung from the willow
bough and removed a bundle swathed in newspaper, sodden and turned to sticky clods
of wet ash. Once unwrapped, the hunting knife refused to glint in the evening light
as if it knew there was grave business ahead.
It was time. The innocent would die to punish
the guilty.
The Fourteenth Letter by Claire Evans published by Little Brown
A mysterious keepsake, a
murdered bride, a legacy of secrets... One balmy June evening in 1881, Phoebe
Stanbury stands before the guests at her engagement party: this is her moment,
when she will join the renowned Raycraft family and ascend to polite society.
As she takes her fiancé's hand, a stranger holding a knife steps forward and
ends the poor girl's life. Amid the chaos, he turns to her aristocratic groom
and mouths: 'I promised I would save you.' The following morning, just a few miles
away, timid young legal clerk William Lamb meets a reclusive client. He finds
the old man terrified and in desperate need of aid: William must keep safe a
small casket of yellowing papers, and deliver an enigmatic message…
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