Castle five years before, the one and only such event she’d ever attended. At least the will finally explained why her father had been so uncharacteristically keen for her to spend time with Arthur Amberton, not just at the ball, but on the monthly visits he’d made with his own father since.
She’d been vaguely suspicious, especially when her father had started to drop hints about her future, even once going so far as to actually say he’d arranged a marriage for her, though she’d eventually concluded that it was some kind of cruel joke. After all, he was the one who’d always told her how small and unattractive she was, how only a fortune hunter would pretend to want her, how she was better off without a husband. It hadn’t made any sense that he would ever want her to marry.
Besides which, there had never been anything in Arthur Amberton’s behaviour to suggest that he was remotely interested in her. He’d always looked as depressed on his visits as he had the first time they’d met at the ball. Their few conversations had been stilted and uncomfortable, their fathers watching over them like a pair of severe-looking owls. He’d never as much as hinted at a secret engagement, if he’d even known of it, though if he had, he couldn’t have made it any more obvious that he didn’t want to marry her. No more than she’d wanted to marry him.
Though even he would have been preferable to the alternative...
She pulled her hood tight around her face, oppressed by a wave of sadness. Arthur Amberton had been lost at sea seven months before, sailing his small boat along the North Yorkshire coast on a calm, late summer’s day. He’d gone out alone, without telling anyone where he was going, and his boat had been discovered by a fishing vessel the next day, intact and undamaged, though Arthur himself had been nowhere to be found. There’d been numerous theories—that he’d hit his head and fallen overboard, that he’d been attacked, that he’d gone for a swim and developed cramp—though no one had wanted to mention the obvious answer, that he’d taken his own life rather than live with his despair a day longer. Rather than marry her.
Ironically, she’d been the one who’d insisted on keeping the news from her father. He’d been bedridden already by that point and she hadn’t wanted to distress him any further. She’d been half-afraid that Henry Amberton, Arthur’s father, might make an appearance, but the following day had brought further bad news. The father had suffered a fatal heart attack on being told about the empty boat. Father and son had died within twenty-four hours of each other, leaving a different heir to the estate.
Captain Lancelot Edward Amberton, the new Viscount Scorborough.
The very thought of him made her shudder, evoking the same feeling of stomach-churning embarrassment she’d felt at their first encounter. She’d been hopelessly naive, actually enjoying his company to begin with. She’d been excited and nervous about her first ball, all too vividly aware of the strange looks and whispered comments she knew her tiny size and extreme paleness attracted, but Captain Amberton had seemed not to notice.
He’d been confident, friendly and open, unlike any man she’d ever met before, seeming to embody the very freedom the ball represented. He’d come to her rescue when his father and brother had been arguing, encouraging her to talk when she felt tongue-tied and putting her at ease when she’d been too afraid to dance. She’d actually defied her father by dancing with him and she couldn’t deny how attractive she’d found him, far more so than his brother despite their being identical twins, with his carelessly swept-back chestnut hair, his broad, muscular frame, and the roguish glint in his eye that had made her want to smile, too. When he’d held her in his arms she’d felt a new and distinctly alarming sensation, a tremulous fluttering low in her abdomen, that had made her feel giddy and excited and awkward all at the same time.
That was before she’d realised he’d been laughing at her, mocking her about the possibility of suitors, as if she’d ever have any. She’d felt self-conscious enough at the start of the evening, but then she’d earnestly wished herself back in the isolation of her own bedroom.
Despite that humiliation, however, worse still had been the scene that had followed. Confusingly, he’d seemed to be standing up for her at first, though she’d felt compelled to defend her own father. The moment when he’d said he wouldn’t want to marry her had been one of the worst of her life. She could hardly have expected any other answer, but the words had still felt like a knife to the heart.
Yet his subsequent banishment had seemed like her fault somehow. Too late, she’d tried to say something to help, but she hadn’t been able to stop it. He’d stormed away and the look he’d given her from the doorway had been anything but friendly. It had seemed more like he hated her.
Her father had taken her aside afterwards, forbidding her to mention the name Lancelot Amberton in his hearing ever again, and she’d overheard enough of the subsequent gossip to understand why. What she’d thought was a hint of scandal about him was in fact the whole truth. He was exactly what her father had called him, a reprobate. A drunkard, a gambler, a notorious ladies’ man—and now the man that she was supposed to marry!
Never in a thousand years would her father have intended to leave her at the mercy of such a man, but he’d made one significant mistake in writing his will. He hadn’t specified a name, simply stating the heir to the Amberton estate—and the new heir was Lance.
She refused to even consider the possibility of marriage to him. He’d returned to Yorkshire a few months before, invalided out of the army a bare month after the deaths of his brother and father with a bullet wound to the leg, or so she’d heard, though he hadn’t been seen in Whitby at all. It was rumoured that he’d become a recluse, never venturing further than the walls of Amberton Castle.
He hadn’t attended her father’s funeral either, hadn’t sent any flowers, nor so much as a card of sympathy. The only communication had come two days afterwards through Mr Rowlinson—a brief note to say that he intended to honour the terms of their fathers’ agreement, that he would meet and marry her exactly one week later, at ten o’clock on the tenth day of March, 1867.
So she’d run away. He was the last man on earth she wanted to see, let alone to marry, and yet she was very much afraid that if she stayed then she would. After a lifetime of obedience, she wasn’t sure exactly how to assert herself, and Lancelot Amberton had struck her as the kind of man who knew exactly how to get what he wanted. And he wanted her fortune—that much she was sure of. It was the only possible motive he could have for wanting to marry her.
In which case, she’d decided, all she needed to do was hide and wait for the terms of her father’s will to expire. Captain Amberton might make efforts to find her during that time, but once the month lapsed, he’d lose interest and she’d be safe. It would leave her almost penniless, all except for a small legacy left by her mother, but it would mean freedom, and surely even a life of poverty would be better than him.
She’d confided her plans to her dearest friend in the world, Ianthe Felstone, and whilst she hadn’t approved, she had understood. After some initial reluctance they’d plotted her escape together.
Ianthe had arranged for Violet to join the supply run that left her husband Robert’s warehouse every two weeks for the Rosedale mines. Then she’d volunteered to go to Whitby station on the morning of the wedding, draped in a heavy black veil to catch the train to Pickering as a decoy. Even her eccentric Aunt Sophoria had been roped in. Ianthe had flatly refused to let her travel without a chaperon, so it was Sophoria that Violet was going to meet in Helmsley, from where they intended to travel to York.
Nervous as she was, the thought of visiting such a large city with all its museums and art galleries and parks was thrilling. She’d resolved to make the most of her time there because afterwards...
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