The Rest Falls Away

Prologue In Which Our Story Commences

His footsteps were soundless, but Victoria felt him moving.

She grasped the bark of the oak, pressing her body into the tree as if it could suck her into safety. But all she felt was unyielding roughness. She couldn't stay here.

Crouching, curling her fingers around a heavy stick, she eased from the safe shadow of the tree and into the liquid silver of moonlight. The sharp snap of a twig beneath her boot sent her bolting on now-silent feet into another nearby shadow…

She could hear him breathing.

And feel the reverberations of his heartbeat.

It thumped loud, steady, strong, pumping into her ears, pulsing through her body as if it were her own organ.

Victoria moved again, her skirts flapping around her ankles as she dashed away from the sound of her pursuer. She tore through the underbrush, dodging from tree to tree and leaping over fallen logs as though she were a mare given her head.

His solid footfalls came closer and faster as she ran.

A branch tore at her face. Brush snagged her skirts.

She ran and ran and ran in the white moonlight, clutching her stick, and still he came, his heartbeat as steady as his tramping feet.

Before she realized it, Victoria stumbled down a small incline and splashed into a creek. The prop of the stick kept her from falling as she slogged through the thigh-high water, her skirts becoming leaden, weighing her down, slowing her until she could barely take another step.

A cry of rage from behind tore her attention as she staggered up the small incline on the other side of the creek.

As she climbed out, she turned and saw him standing there on the opposite bank. She couldn't see his face… but his eyes gleamed in the dark, and fury and frustration emanated from his body. But he did not follow her.

He did not cross the running water.

Victoria jolted awake, her heart thrumming madly in her chest.

Sunlight, not moonbeams, blazed through the window.

A dream. It had been a dream.

She smoothed a hand over her face, damp with perspiration, and brushed away the tendrils of hair that had escaped her thick braid.

The fifth dream. It was time.

Her bed was high off the floor, and her feet thumped onto the Aubusson rug as she launched herself from under the coverlet, in desperate need of the chamber pot. Heedless of immodesty, Victoria pulled her sweat-soaked chemise up and over her body and felt the relief of cool air on her clammy skin.

Five dreams in less than a fortnight. That was the sign. She would go to Aunt Eustacia today.

The remnants of the dream dissolved, replaced with a hum of anticipation and a tingle of apprehension. Victoria looked at herself in the tall, cloudy mirror. The warning had come.

Today she would learn just what that warning portended.