DRIVING TO DREDTHORNE Hall had not been Miss Meredith Starling’s original intention when she had set out from the house that afternoon. In the rig she carried two baskets of fine, ripe apricots to be delivered to the village, along with messages from her mother.

“Tell the sisters Brexley these should do very well for jam,” Lady Helena Starling had said from the morning room chaise lounge she occupied most of each day. “But they must use them before Sunday or they will surely go rotten. Pray do not put the second basket into the vicar’s hands, for I know Mr. Branwen will eat too many and make himself sick again. You may take them to his wife directly, for she will know where to best conceal them until she can make them into tarts. You are certain that you do not wish Percival to accompany you?”

“I am, Mama.” Meredith smiled to conceal her annoyance. “Now rest, and I will be back in time for tea.”

As she drove from her parent's modest estate Meredith still brooded over the necessity to insist she could manage the simple errand alone. Her mother often begged Captain Percival Starling to play her escort, something that mortified Meredith. She was very fond of her cousin, but she certainly didn't require him to tag along after her everywhere. Meredith had already made peace with the misfortune that plagued her life; why couldn't her mother?

Agitation kindled a rare flash of rebellion, and when Meredith reached the crossroads she turned the rig in the opposite direction from the village. She needed more time to sort out her thoughts before she braced the vicar and the Sisters Brexley. Surely it would do no harm to enjoy the crisp air and golden sunlight by herself; anyone would agree that it was the perfect day for a ride through the country.

You mean another ride past The House, her conscience chided.

Meredith would never admit it to another soul, but long ago she had formed a secret fascination for Dredthorne Hall. Built over a century past by Emerson Thorne, an immensely wealthy gentleman with a scandalous affection for French chateaus, the old house stood like a brooding bastion of hauteur on a high hill overlooking the sprawling lands and forests belonging to the estate. Compared to the other country manors neighboring the village it seemed wholly out of place. Yet while many disdained Dredthorne’s elegantly shabby facade, unfashionable staircase towers and overgrown terraced gardens, Meredith had always felt a strange affinity with the house.

No other young ladies of her acquaintance shared her interest, but that had more to do with the Thorne family curse.

The dark, wicked legends about Dredthorne Hall abounded, of course. Like all small villages, Renwick had stalwart gossips who collected such scandalous lore to discuss in avid murmurs over afternoon tea. Some insisted that the original owner had died of a broken heart on the very day the house was finished (Meredith’s father claimed that tale a ridiculous fiction, as church records plainly showed Mr. Thorne had occupied the house for over a decade before succumbing to a prolonged illness.)  Several servants who had abruptly left their positions at the estate claimed ghosts wandered wailing through the halls at night (Meredith's mother insisted this was petty revenge on their part for being dismissed for various infractions.) Even more fantastic tales of Dredthorne’s lost treasures and ferocious monsters frequently circulated, all of which came without a mention of witnesses or a shred of proof.

The most persistent and ominous rumor had always been the Thorne family curse. According to the local tell-tales, every master of Dredthorne was doomed to fall in love with a lady who spent a night in the house. This then cursed not the gentleman but the lady, for anyone who dared to become the mistress of Dredthorne Hall inevitably came to a swift, horrible end.

“Some go mad and must be locked away, poor dears,” Meredith’s aunt insisted. “Others vanish, never to be seen again. But most of the poor ladies are found dead in that wretched house, always within a few months of the wedding. Slain by their evil husbands, I daresay.”

While every gossip in the village repeated this nonsense as absolute fact, Meredith found it almost laughable. The masters of Dredthorne had likely been no more cursed or evil than any fabulously wealthy gentlemen. She felt sure such privileged Londoners viewed the country as a place of respite, not residence.

No Thorne had even bothered to visit Dredthorne Hall for the last fifty years, until the new heir had arrived a month past.

As for that mysterious gentleman being cursed to love only a woman who spent the night alone in his house, to Meredith that seemed an utter Banbury tale. He certainly would be obliged to marry such a lady—but only if he wished to avoid ruining her reputation and permanently incurring the wrath of her family. She imagined honor-bound marriages did take place regularly in London, where society was fast, immense, and said to thrive on such intrigues, but they simply didn’t happen here.

In Renwick the modest social calendar moved at a crawl. Every family knew each other, and closely watched over every unmarried daughter until her most advantageous match could be arranged. Indeed, a young lady could not wear a new bonnet to church without becoming the talk of the villlage.

“Not that I'll ever marry, Bessie,” Meredith told her horse as she tugged on the reins to slow the rig. “Perhaps if I remind Mama of that, she will not mind so much letting me out of our house.”

Bessie's bridle jingled as she shook her head and snorted.

As her elderly parents' primary source of companionship Meredith devoted much of her time to them. Being a good and attentive daughter was the only way she could show her gratitude for the endless trouble her misfortunes had caused them. Yet as the years passed, and all of her friends married and started their families, her own loneliness grew.

Unhappily that, like Meredith’s luck, would never change.

Ahead of the rig the road smoothed out and forked off into the first of the four drives traversing the grounds of Dredthorne Hall. On each side of the long-bricked drive twin stately lions carved from moss-mottled Italian marble sat atop Doric-styled pedestal columns to which iron gates had once been attached. They had likely been removed some time in the past by a tenant seeking more ready access to the estate, and since never replaced.

“Good morning, Augustus, Tiberius,” Meredith murmured, ducking her head in mock deference as she passed them. As a girl she'd been a little afraid of the fierce-faced beasts, for it had seemed as if they had glared directly down at her. Once she had secretly named them, however, they seemed far less imposing.

She then looked up at The House (for Meredith could not think of it as anything less grand); which sat like an aging beauty in her best finery atop that immaculate hill, waiting for a beau that would never come.

A veteran of many such rides, Bessie slowed on her own while Meredith beheld Dredthorne's expansive north facade. Soft grey slate roofs capped the mellow buff stone and brick of the house, which flanked by its unusual staircase towers on either end presented to the eye like a small castle. Constructed of towering, intricately-sculpted marble panels depicting life-sized warrior angels, the front vestibule had an unearthly quality more like a gateway to another world than an entrance to a dwelling. Sadly, time had weathered the exterior, adding cracks and pitting to nearly all of the house’s features, but for Meredith that added to its air of mystery. In the sunlight the house took on a faint glow that obscured most of the obvious decay, making it shimmer against the horizon.

How could anyone believe such a lovely place to be dark or wicked?

Meredith tugged Bessie to a stop, and regarded the house for a long moment before she allowed herself a single, unhappy sigh. She would have given anything to see the inside, but her parents were hardly sociable. She could not recall the last time they had gone out to call on their neighbors; they preferred to host friends at their home. Aside from seeing to the occasional errand, and attending church services on Sunday, Meredith also rarely went anywhere. That was not likely to change, either, thanks to Dredthorne's new master, the reclusive Colonel Alistair Thorne.

The ladies of the village had much to say about the colonel, as they had grown seriously displeased with him.

“We were so looking forward to welcoming the colonel into our society,” Lady Hardiwick had told Meredith's mother when she came with several of her friends for tea. “But he will not have us. He accepts none of our invitations, and has his man turn away every caller at the door.”

“Perhaps he is ill, my lady, and cannot stand the company as yet,” the vicar's wife, Mrs. Branwen, suggested with her usual cautious diffidence. “Mr. Branwen mentioned that he is just returned from serving in India.”

Her ladyship sniffed. “Our dear Gerald is come back to us this very month on injury leave, with his bad leg still paining him terribly. Yet compared to the colonel, my son is the toast of the town.”

“Thorne is likely still occupied with settling his domestics,” Meredith's mother said, and then frowned. “Do you know, I have heard that he brought them with him from India. All of them men.”

“Heathens in turbans, I was told,” Lady Hardiwick said, her expression darkening. “They speak no English and dress very oddly. I think it disgusting.”

“Surely not,” Mrs. Branwen said. “It is an act of charity to bring them here, and give them work.”

“That is his problem,” Lady Starling told her. “A single man can never manage a household with any degree of competence, and he has the added misfortune of overrunning his with foreigners. No wonder he cannot get on. I wager he will very soon be of a mind to be more sociable, if only to find a wife.”

“Well, he will not have my Prudence,” Lady Hardiwick stated flatly. “I don't care how rich he is, you know what they say about ladies who marry Thorne men. And I refuse to have such a strange, disagreeable fellow as my son-in-law.”

Meredith recalled how tightly she had pressed her lips together after that remark. Prudence Hardiwick was five years her senior, and while passably attractive had no personality. Whenever a man spoke to her, she giggled incessantly, a habit she had cultivated sometime during her three seasons in London. No gentleman had ever offered for her, much to no one's surprise and her mother's great displeasure.

These days Prudence spent most of her time in the company of her friends as they shopped, gossiped and ogled any member of the militia unfortunate enough to cross their path. No doubt being presented to Colonel Thorne would send Prudence into mirthful paroxysms, but Meredith imagined the simpering lady would have little appeal for such a traveled veteran.

“I expect I have now dashed your hopes, Meredith,” Lady Hardiwick said, and patted her hand. “But you are the better for it. No young lady should saddle herself with an unmannerly husband, no matter how desperate her situation.”

“Indeed.” Meredith smiled as she imagined pouring the rest of her tea over her ladyship's feathered bonnet. “You are very kind to say so, ma'am.”

“My poor darling girl.” Lady Starling released a long sigh. “Her father and I cannot work out why she must suffer so terribly, for she is everything sweetness,” she said, as if her daughter wasn't in the room.

“I am not suffering, Mama,” Meredith said quietly. “I always mend.”

Lady Starling ignored her to address the vicar’s wife. “I live for the day that the good Lord hears my prayers, Deidre, and removes this terrible burden from her.”

“I am sure He will, my lady.” Mrs. Branwen gave Meredith a sympathetic look. “You seem quite recovered from that dreadful fall you had last month, my dear.”

Meredith forced a smile. “I am, ma'am, thank you.”

Now, sitting outside Dredthorne, Meredith could understand why the colonel had refused to have anything to do with his neighbors. Country villages were filled with the hopeful and often conniving parents of unmarried daughters; he must have known he'd be a target of matrimonial machinations from the moment he moved into the house. Still, it was odd that he had refused to allow any callers. The vicar would have been among the first to attempt to welcome him, and no one ever turned away the perennially ebullient Mr. Branwen.

Perhaps he is too unwell to accept visitors. Whenever Meredith's bad luck resulted in an injury she wanted to do nothing but stay in her room and be left alone until the pain eased. A soldier like the colonel would understand how difficult it was to put on a brave face when one felt–

“Out of the way!”

The shout wrenched Meredith from her thoughts, and she glanced over her shoulder to see a farmer with a heavily-laden cart barreling straight at her. Quickly she slapped Bessie's rump with the reins, and drove the rig to one side to allow him past. As soon as he did, Bessie whinnied angrily and started off after him.

“Whoa, girl, whoa,” Meredith called out, tugging desperately on the reins.