Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 1
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 info@jeaninecroft.com
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