The Devil Earl Read Online Free Page A

striking the hour.
    A breathless Phoebe reached Prudence’s side and pulled rather frantically on her arm. “Come, Prudence, let us go home before we are drowned or washed into the sea.” Following her sister’s gaze, Prudence found it was not the slippery cliffs that drew Phoebe’s look of horror, but Wolfinger itself, tall and black and menacing in the dim light. As she viewed the formidable edifice with admiration, Prudence noticed a figure hurrying toward the great stone steps that marched toward the arched entrance.
    “Hello!” Prudence called, moving forward. “Hello, there!” The man halted and gazed in her direction, and to Prudence’s delight, she realized it was young Penhurst himself. With high hopes, she strode toward him eagerly,ignoring the dismay that was quite apparent on the boy’s face.
    “Mr. Penhurst! How nice that we should run into you!” Prudence said, speaking louder than usual, so that she might be heard over the roaring of the wind. “We were just out for our walk, and I said to Phoebe, we simply must look in on Mr. Penhurst.”
    If Mr. Penhurst saw anything unusual in the two girls’ strolling about on such a ferocious day, he was too well-bred to say so, but he did not appear pleased to see them. He looked anxiously over his shoulder, as if torn between inviting them in, which, apparently, he did not want to do, and leaving them to the mercy of the elements, which would hardly mark him as a gentleman.
    Although his face brightened at the arrival of Phoebe, who had hurried to join them, he nonetheless appeared troubled as he glanced around. Seen against the backdrop of his ancestral home, and stricken by some sort of nervous energy, he seemed more of a Penhurst, but Prudence still found him sadly lacking. The gathering clouds muted the brilliance of his blond hair, yet he could hardly be called mysterious, and he was obviously uncomfortable in his surroundings.
    While she listened absently to the young people’s chatter, Prudence brooded. When it became clear, from his peculiar manner, that young Penhurst was not going to invite them inside, she suspected that she would have to think of some way to politely force him to do so. She was just on the point of manufacturing a swollen ankle when the decision was taken away from them all.
    Thunder had been growing in the distance, so at first no one took note of a low rumbling, and the sky had become so dark as to make seeing any great distance an impossibility. But suddenly a great flash of lightning lit the area as bright as day, illuminating a coach and four that appeared over the rise in the drive.
    Prudence was immediately struck by the funereal aspect of the scene. It seemed apocalyptic: the black horses, their hooves pounding in their headlong race toward the abbey, and the shiny, midnight-colored carriage, with its driver wrapped so well against the weather as to be completely unrecognizable.
    She sucked in a breath, trying to absorb the majesty of the vision as the animals rushed forward against a bleak, stormtossed sky, the wind whipping and howling around them like a banshee.
    This was the stuff of her dreams, and Prudence was suddenly filled with a sort of wild exhilaration that she had never known before, her blood pumping fresh and fast within her veins. Never in her quiet, sensible existence, or even in the silent splendor of her own imagination, had Prudence known such a moment, and she felt giddy with the force of it.
    She was aware of Mr. Penhurst pulling Phoebe back, closer to the steps, but she remained where she was, thrilled by the thunder and clatter of the magnificent vehicle’s approach. It rolled to a halt but a few feet from where the three of them stood watching, and with breathless excitement, Prudence recognized the Ravenscar coat of arms, gleaming in the shadowy light.
    Then the door was thrown open, and a man stepped out. Tall and lean and swathed in a dark cloak, he looked like some phantom from hell, and