31 December

The weeks go by in such haste now that I have something to look forward to, something to fear. The last day of my packing has been a nervous one. Without trying to draw too much attention too myself (the maid was given excuses about changing my wardrobe out for the lengthy winter season), I have been scurrying as many clothes, notebooks, and pens as I could from my room to the meeting room, as Atticus has taken to calling it. As the doctor never greets guests, the final tour destination for the Lord DeCourt seemed appropriate to set up our centre for secrets. My room was never safe, we all realised too late, not if the doctor could slip in whenever he liked, moving furniture around with little noise.

How grateful I am not to have been touched in my sleep! Once we'd determined that the doctor had indeed been in my room without my consent, the topic of course came up, but if I am sure of anything, it is that I remain unmolested by that foul man's deathly hands.

I write today and not yesterday or any other day in the past seven because Evie has just returned from the front door with the post in her hands. Aside from a few receipts and messages from patients in the heart of the city (how many of them were doomed, and they knew not!), there was one item she was most excited to behold - a summons from the Lord.

As the doctor neither celebrated nor permitted the exultations of holiday spirit in any way, Atticus was freed from the slave-like duties he'd been subjected to in the last month. Indeed, the doctor had been so furious at the arrival of any gifts we'd set aside for him that he'd gone off on the poor cook's son, berating Atticus for a failure to inform us when he very well should have known better. It would be quite unnecessary to mention how thoroughly put out Atticus was when Evie summoned him into the meeting room. Still, I will not fail to mention his mood changed considerably once Evie pulled the letter out of the envelope and read it triumphantly.

"Mrs. Radcliffe,

As the new year approaches fast, it would make my evening if you and your delightful acquaintance, Ms. Peterson, would join me for a midnight supper at my home. If your husband objects to the matter of his lady wife being separated at such an ungentlemanly hour, then we can, of course, reschedule for the daytime, when the year is fresh. I shall not take a refusal on this second matter! If your friend is feeling hesitant about another visit, I offer warm drinks and sweets to carry her through the cold evening safely.

Ever yours,

Carroway DeCourt."

"That's quite brief, isn't it?" Atticus wrinkled his nose and blearily rubbed a few freckles. "How are you to know if it means what we want it to?"

"He requests Winn specifically - warm drinks to keep her safe?" Tapping him on the head with the letter, Evie smiled widely at us in turns. "That's our sign, now isn't it! Of course our wonderful doctor wouldn't like me going along. It's a fancy way of inviting Winn back to Dorset, under his protection."

We all stared at the paper in Evie's hand. An expectant breath lay suspended over the table.

"So, that's it, then."

"She's not going off to die, silly."

"No, but it certainly feels like it, what with her stealing off into the darkness.

"Excuse me!" As much as Evie looked at me, the talking over my head was proving to be overwhelming, and I blinked in frustration at the two of them. "She is right here!" The identical look of sympathetic concern from the both of them made me realise that they were indeed made for one another. I couldn't even help being upset, so amusing did I find it, though my smile quickly faded when I remembered what house I was in, and who the head of that house was. If even a shared look betrayed their feelings for one another, then I was neither the only one to notice, nor would I be the only one to figure their affections doomed.

I needed to find a way to release Evie from her marital prison if I was to save both her life, and stupid cook's life. What a stupid thing it all was! I was supposed to be in England for my health, Evie tending to my garden as I wrote fanciful stories about horrid things happening to fictional people! It wasn't any fair that a man had to get in the way of that, or that a boy had to put her life in danger.

My frustration was an ill-placed thing. Even as we nervously counted down the hours until midnight, with hardly enough time to send a reply back to the Lord, I knew I liked Atticus too much to be angry with him and his feelings towards our dear Evie. To be angry with him would be a most hypocritical thing indeed! Besides, the girl he picked aside, I felt compassion for the urchin, as Evie calls him. With a family born into inconsequential means and a lifetime of servitude, how could I, Winnifred Yulia Peterson, not sympathise! Was I not born of family under the same circumstances? What hope would I have had in life if my parents had not fought tooth and nail for them? Everything in the world is against my life, and my father's life, and his father's before him. No, I could hardly be angry with a boy who toiled under the same lot, be he a Black boy or not, or just a poor boy with no say in how he could live and love.

By the time evening came tumbling down with the snow, Evie was red-eyed and I was sniffling in her arms. Poor Atticus didn't know what to do with himself, watching the women weep! He disappeared for the initial crying to make tea, coming back once we had dried ourselves up and stood by the front door. "You're going to get me going," he grumbled, elbowing me gently in the arm. "You better write, you hear? I don't care how many cyphers I have to learn, I'm holding you to it."

"Don't lose that journal, Winn," Evie sternly warned as the familiar tinkle of the carriage bell sounded outside the door.

"I will, and I won't," I replied to one, then the other with a watery smile. Evie leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead, her lips leaving a warm impression on my already cold skin. Blushing severely, Atticus merely gave me a tight embrace, patting my head once we separated.

There was nothing else to say. As the clock rang out somewhere for the eleventh hour, I made my way outside for the first time in weeks, stepping down into the frost. From the carriage on the street, the Lord waved enthusiastically through the window, his pale hands gleaming even through the tinted glass. Once I had accepted his hand and pulled myself through the door, we turned and waved our farewells, until the road led us away from the great and horrible house of Radcliffe and into the dark streets of Cambridge.

1 January

Writing this on the way to the Lord's house while we discuss our plans. Not a very smart thing, to write in a poorly-lit carriage on an uneven road! I suspect I'll regret the messiness of my lines in the morning, but I am far too nervous not to scribble something down. Sitting beside me, Lord DeCourt alternates between wringing his hands together and rapping his cane on the floor of the carriage. Even in the flickering lamp light, his worry is obvious.

"I worry so, about your health in this weather," he admitted, after we spoke of the journey to Dorset. "This is a most frightful one! I myself find my ailments only increase tenfold when the snow falls this severely."

"Your concern is appreciated," I answered warmly, pressing his hand with my own, "but I am afraid I must make haste, my Lord. Anything I can do to rescue Ms. Thomas from this... unnatural marriage."

"You call her Ms. Thomas," he noted.

"I do not consider them married, my Lord, especially if their union is unconsummated." He shivered and gave me a sympathetic look.

"I have not had the fortune to meet this Radcliffe fellow, but what little impressions you two have left... I suspect I would not appreciate being his bride!" We contemplated the image of the bright and smiling Lord in a bridal veil beside the simmering, dark visage of the doctor and shared a shuddering laugh.

No, he would not appreciate being the wife of Dr. Radcliffe, I considered more seriously as the carriage rolled along into the new year. If both Evie and Atticus' lives were any indication of what happened when the doctor wanted someone close, then I could only imagine how many countless other people had lost a loved one to find themselves at the mercy of the man. Then, there was the matter of the letter in my attic, a letter which I carry in my journal even now. Whoever had lived in my house previously had been subjected to marriage to the doctor, and if I could somehow obtain proof of this union, then perhaps I could nullify the one to my friend. Unless, of course, the previous wife of Igor Radcliffe was dead.

Evie, I remembered with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, said the soil had been exceptionally rich in my garden. Atticus had buried corpses in my town, and Evie had dug up the dirt in my house. All I had left to wonder was who had been buried in the garden.

As the carriage pulled to a stop in front of the DeCourt estate, I wondered what I would do if I really did learn who the doctor had been previously married to. As it was, his presence in Cambridge did not seem to strike anyone - would the neighbours even care if he harboured a wife whom he was not legally allowed to have? Even the Lord was unfamiliar with the doctor (though, his absence of awareness could be explained by his more isolated nature. Even his initial viewing of the house had been something of a chance occasion, borne from an even rarer walk about the town). One person I was convinced knew Dr. Radcliffe, however, was the doctor in Dorset. Hadn't they been the one to refer Evie to St. Peter's Church? If that man knew of him, I wondered how long the doctor had been stationed in the unfortunate church where the rector languished.

I am far too excited for what comes next. Nerves by the bundle roil in my head - what if I perish in the cold? What if I find a wife of the doctor, living or dead? Will I ever speak with my parents again, smell the salt and whiskey on my father?

I ended my last passage as the carriage stopped. It's a fine shame I cannot walk and write at the same time! How productive would I be, if my eyes were not needed on the ground in front of my every step, especially in the snowy darkness. Currently, I shiver in the library room Evie described to me, a cup of tea in one hand and a new pen in the other. The Lord has been most generous in ensuring I am well-supplied for my journey. "If a companion the lady needs, a companion the lady shall get!" I had to politely decline his offer - how cumbersome a pair we would be, a cripple and a sickly woman!

"We'll need to bring the doctor along with us if we both go," I told him with a rue smile, before reminding him that I was not a lady.

"Very true, Miss. You possess far too much courage for the ilk of our landed gentry." It was a strange compliment, for I have never been accused of bravery, or anything of the sort. The sight of spiders sends shivers down my spine and too cold a wind has me hiding in the nearest vicinity to a fire place. No, I was not courageous in any way. The journey I undertook hardly constituted bravery, I didn't think. Was friendship not something you sacrificed your sense of self for? The power of a loved one was more than enough to send the most spineless of us all into the heart of every haunted house, the crumbling walls of even the most destitute of abbeys. No, if I was to journey into the heart of the devil's lair and expose his lies, there was nothing there but necessity, and I was firmly convinced that being brave would only get in the way.

I set sail for Dorset in the morning, though my boat is, in this case, the back of Lord DeCourt's fastest horse. Best to get some sleep in before I muse myself into exhaustion the next day.

Praying and fearing and wondering what I've got my sorry self into,

Winn