Exclusive excerpt from The Snowdrop

Greetings Readers! On this snowy day, I have an excerpt to share with you from my newest release. I hope you enjoy!

December 3rd, 1886

“Well?” he snapped, not looking up from his papers. “I hope you have good cause for interrupting me, Chauncey.”

“A Miss Mayferry has wandered up from the gate, sir, in all this rain.” Hiccup. “She has come from a place called… Mayferry Marsh.” Hiccup. “Claims to be expected, sir.”

“What?” Only half-listening, he still studied the papers on his desk and dimly wondered whether it was time he started watering down the port, before his steward emptied the cellars entirely. “If she’s begging for food, send her to the kitchen door and have Elkins…ah, no, she will have gone home by now. You’ll have to see if there is any food left out.”

But he felt the man hovering uncertainly behind him, tilting and weaving even more than usual.

“Chauncey, do you have something more to say? Your lurking silence is only marginally less irritating than the high-pitched twittering of an addled wench who feels herself hard-done- by. Which is more than three quarters of the damnable female populace, apparently.”

“No, sir. It is just that—”

“If the decrepit crone wants money, send her to the church. Old Sproat has more coin and gold plate tucked away in his coffers and vaults than anybody. Besides, he likes to preach about providing for the less fortunate. Can’t say I’ve ever attended his sermons, but I believe that’s how the church works. Give us your money and we’ll provide for the poor. Is that not so?”

The steward cleared his throat, but the next words came in a clear, slightly impatient voice that was definitely not Chauncey’s.

“I have, in my possession, a letter confirming my employment and instructing me to come here, to Stanbury House. This is the place, is it not?”

An ink blot dripped to his paper. “By the Lawgod All Nighty,” he cursed, low. Twisting around in his chair, he discovered a damp and dowdy creature standing at the steward’s elbow and making a wet puddle in the doorway of his library. He had been so caught up in his work that he had not even heard the heavy rain falling against his window.

“The coachman who set me down at the gate assured me this is the place,” she said. “In the dark and the rain, not knowing the area at all, I was obliged to take his word for it. I sought shelter at the end of the drive, where I saw light in these windows, and this good fellow let me in.”

He remained silent, still retrieving his thoughts from where they were scattered across his papers like a spilled file. A woman stood inside his library, and that was an occasion he generally avoided for good reason. Dash Deverell was not well-schooled in social niceties and would be perfectly happy never having to use any. It took him a moment to adjust, as it does for an eye coming from dark to light.

As the pause lengthened ominously, he heard every clock in the house ticking too quickly. Was Chauncey over-oiling the cogs again? Rain tickled his window with mischievous fingertips, and the coals in the grate exhaled a low hiss. As a boy he used to imagine a dragon lived there, in the fireplace. Tonight, it had slept, until she caused it to open one eye and give that warning grumble. Now it turned over again and resumed its slumber. A coal tumbled to the hearth, as if disturbed by the beast’s heaving hump.

The woman he could barely see had brought with her a fragrance never before known in that room, and a sense of anticipation equally rare.

A disturbance felt even by the sleeping dragon.

“I pray there has been no mistake,” she said, her sentence ending on a gentle, tentative uplift.

At last he gathered his words and managed a reply. “Well, I wouldn’t rely on prayer. It’s a long time since anybody prayed in this house, and I suspect it was too little and too late.”

He heard Chauncey give a little snort. The candelabra held aloft in the steward’s shaky hand, swayed about like a ship with all its sails aflame, set adrift on a stormy night’s sea. Somewhere near it, her face floated, a moon sunk into that dark water, her features fuzzy. Although Dash had two oil lamps on his desk, she was too far away for that light to reach and help him make her out. As for the fire, he had let it die away to a lazy smolder that gave out nothing more than a dull gleam of old, pirate gold.

He squinted harder, trying to make out where the dark ended and she, in her black garments, began. “All the way from Mayferry Marsh?” he grumbled. “Forty miles at least. No little journey for a woman alone. What could possibly have put you to such a foolish exercise in winter? What name did you say?”

“Mayferry,” she repeated slowly and steadily. “Miss Daisy Mayferry. I replied to an advertisement that was posted last month in The Lady, for a companion with some light housekeeping. And an interest in water painting.”

Once again Chauncey gave a bemused snort and tittered, while his great height leaned precariously, first left and then right, his shoulder eventually bumping up against the doorframe.

“After my application, I received a letter, inviting me to start my employment here as soon as possible.” She paused and, even with his poor sight, he caught a gleam of something strange in her eyes as she finally lifted her gaze from the carpet to his face.

It caused just the tiniest of jolts to his pulse. As if there was an electrical storm in the air.

Apparently, she suffered a similar shock.

“Oh,” she exhaled. “Oh, no. Surely not. God help me. Not another one.” The words dropped from her lips, like rejected bites of something unexpectedly sour and maggoty. “Deverell.” If both her hands were not tucked inside a black velvet muff, she would undoubtedly have crossed herself, he mused.

“That is what they call me. One of the names.”

“You…live here?”

“From time to time. When it cannot be avoided.”

“Then a terrible mistake has been made. I must leave at once.”

But as the new arrival began her retreat, he gave a sharp whistle.

She came to a halt out of sheer surprise, he suspected. Doubtless she’d never been whistled at before.

Still seated, but twisted around in his chair, he demanded, “Where do you think to go in this weather and at this late hour, madam? That coachman will be halfway to Folkstone by now. I suggest you stand where you are, until we get to the bottom of your curious account of events. For all we know, you could be a thief come here to steal the spoons. Or sent as a distraction, while your accomplice lurks in the rhododendrons, waiting for you to let him in through the drawing room window.”

“That is quite ridiculous, sir.” Her gloved hand emerged from the muff, gripping a letter. “As you will see, I speak the truth—”

Impatient, he clicked his fingers and Chauncey quickly took the letter from her hand, delivering it to Dash with four long and lurching strides and a dangerously exaggerated bow. Whilst being flung about like flags on a windy day, the flames of that candelabra clung with admirable and astonishing determination to their wicks.

“I was told that the vacant post is for companion to the Dowager Lady Audley,” she said crossly. “That is what the letter says. And there was no mention of any Deverell involved in the business.”

He gave a curt laugh. “Madam, there is usually a Deverell somewhere, involved in most things. People like you, content in your tidy, tranquil, comfortable lives, never give much thought to how the world keeps turning. Just as long as it does, and none of the dirt gets on your hands.”

Her disdain was so palpable from across the room that she needn’t have put it into words. But she did. “Aren’t we fortunate? Thank god for Deverells.”

“Place the blame wherever you will. But I rather think the devil has more right to it in my case.”

While Chauncey returned to her side with long, unsteady steps that suggested he saw puddles on the carpet and meant to avoid them, Dash scanned the note very briefly in the glow of an oil lamp and then heaved a brusque sigh. “Madam, Lady Audley lives on the estate in the dower house, on the other side of the lake and the park. She moved here many years ago and now belongs to the Stanbury estate. Like the pointless bloody marble folly and the ridiculously ostentatious fountain.” Refolding the letter, he slid it away in the little drawer of his desk, and she, after holding out her hand in vain for its return, finally tucked her fingers back inside her muff.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible for me to stay,” she said. “Had I known that you were, in any way, connected to this lady, I would not have come.”

“Once Miss Mayferry has got her protests out of the way, Chauncey, you can show her to a box room or a linen cupboard, priest hole or some other out-of-the-way place upstairs for the remains of the night. Have Elkins traipse her down to the dower house in the morning.” He turned back to his work. “No point making any introductions in the middle of the damned evening. The quarrelsome jade is likely abed now, and if roused from it she will likely meet her guest at the door with a loaded rifle. She generally shoots first and asks questions of the corpse.” He picked up his pen. “Now I should like a piece of quiet.”

“Very good, sir.” With his free hand, Chauncey gave a salute that almost knocked Miss Mayferry’s bonnet from her head.

“Pardon me,” she interrupted, pert, “but I just told you that I cannot remain here in this house with a Deverell. I suppose you do not remember me, but I—”

“You needn’t be a fretful Fanny. I shall be down here, at my desk, working all evening. As for the future of your employment, I’m not here very often. When I am, you won’t know it.” Through gritted teeth he added, “I shan’t expect an invitation to tea.”

“That is fortunate, since you would never be invited. I’d as soon throw the kettle at you. And the name is Daisy, not Fanny. But I prefer Miss Mayferry, since we are hardly intimate acquaintances. Nor likely to be.”

Find out what happens next in The Snowdrop.

Image: Yes or No, by John Everett Millais